Posted on 07/23/2002 6:41:57 PM PDT by Karl_Lembke
Two people come to your door with a petition to give evolution some competition in the science classroom. One is a biblical literalist who wants genetics out and Genesis in. The other is a science professor with exquisite academic credentials, championing a compelling theory called intelligent design. He speaks in painful detail about the bacterial flagellum, whatever that is. Though many may prefer old-style creationism, nowadays the scientist in the suit is getting the most signatures.
These new anti-evolutionists say life's mechanisms-like the flagellum, a propellerlike appendage powered by a complex rotary engine that's found in some of Earth's simplest life forms-are too improbably perfect to have formed by chancy Darwinian evolution alone. The flagellum, as surely as a pop-top on a Coke can, was designed by some unnamed intelligence that might-or might not-be God.
Classroom time. That's good enough for those itching to get God into science class. Efforts to force the teaching of Bible-based "creation science" petered out in the 1980s, after several court rulings that deemed it unconstitutional. But educators from state boards to individual classrooms are more open to intelligent design, increasingly seeing it as a viable scientific theory to be taught side by side with evolution. In Ohio, for example, the board of education's curricular standards committee objected to a draft of new statewide science standards this year because it didn't mention intelligent design. Mainstream scientists, while fuming about giving ID equal time, end up giving it just that by rebutting it in public debates, books, and the press. They have to-ID's arguments are not only engaging but also well beyond the average American's knowledge of science.
Not all of its proponents are motivated by religion-many say they are frustrated by what they see as intractable problems with Darwinism. But conservative Christianity has embraced the idea, seeing it as a viable way to introduce religion into the classroom-and sunder materialism in the process. (Not the kind of materialism that results in impractical shoes but the philosophical backbone of science: that everything can be explained through natural laws and physical phenomena). "There's a renewed vigor in the movement," says philosopher Robert Pennock, editor of the recent tome Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. "They feel optimistic somehow that this time they're going to get it right."
Part of ID's attraction is its intuitive quality. Countless people already have a sense that life is too complex to have just happened. And though ID meshes comfortably with religion, its seemingly undogmatic approach appeals to a vast middle ground. "Some people try to give the impression that if you do not believe in Darwinism, you are a young-Earth creationist who believes the world was made in a puff of smoke 6,000 years ago," says Michael Behe, a pro-ID biochemistry professor at Lehigh University.
Nor is it difficult to play off the unease many feel in the face of evolution. The ID movement loves to quote the few scientists who have publicly equated evolution and atheism, like bestselling author Richard Dawkins (who announced that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist"). And Darwinism can evoke a pointless, amoral world in which humans are just so many animals scrabbling for survival. ID seems more comforting: "It plays to our own egos," says Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University, who argues that the self-renewing, self-correcting process of evolution is more in line with Christian teachings. "Many people would prefer to think they are the direct products of a benign, beneficent creator."
At bottom, ID is a pretty simple concept. Somewhere, somehow, something intervened in evolution. Most proponents won't specify the designing force (at least, not publicly)-it could be God, aliens, or time travelers. There's no consensus on the rest. Some believe that evolution works up to a point. Behe doesn't doubt that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor, but he thinks Darwin's mechanism can't account for the complex molecules that make life tick. Others advocate the notion of an invisible hand guiding all of life's history, from primordial soup to human beings.
The idea is argued at just as many levels. Highly specialized critters like the bombardier beetle, which squirts a scalding mixture of hydrochloric acid and quinone at its enemies, have been used as evidence of a designer since Darwin's day. How, one ID argument goes, could such an apparatus evolve bit by bit in a series of mutations, when half a sac of acid means a dead bug? Behe sees the same kind of "irreducible complexity" in the microscopic workings of the flagellum and the eye. Try using the fossil record, he says, to explain the 11-cis-retinal molecule, which reacts with light to set off the biochemical process that produces vision, or the intricate cellular architecture of the retina. Remove any component and the whole structure fails.
Don't ask. Opponents retort that such theories aren't science and stifle further inquiry by attributing what may not yet be understood to an unknowable cause. "Their arguments don't lead to anything that's empirically investigable," says Jack Krebs, a Kansas science teacher who opposed the introduction of ID into the state's science curriculum early last year. Scientists, meanwhile, say they are learning more and more about how evolution could have fashioned even the most bafflingly complex structures.
ID proponents say both sides belong in the classroom as competing scientific theories (although they often call Darwinism a religion in its own right). Support for ID in schools has boiled up at the state level in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nebraska, and Kansas. In March, Ohio's board of education invited four scientists, two pro-ID, two against, to a debate. "Teach the controversy," said the proponents, suggesting that, while the standards need not explicitly mandate intelligent design, they should require that alternate theories be presented.
The pro-ID speakers also pointed out mistakes in biology texts, such as an inaccurate illustration showing similarities among many species' embryos (since removed from the book in question), and expounded on theories like Behe's. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute, a conservative Seattle think tank, posited that ID was being censored because it doesn't fit the dominant scientific paradigm. "There are many scientific methods," he said. "Theirs is restricted to naturalistic arguments." He also appealed to common sense: "Organisms look designed because they were."
Not so, said the pro-evolution scientists, who described how a complex molecule could evolve and why naturalism allows us to explore the universe without preconceptions. Brown's Miller also addressed what many saw as the core issue. "Evolution is not anti-God," he said.
So far, ID has not won what would be its first significant victory: a place in the Ohio curriculum. A new draft of the science standards still does not mention ID. (Local schools can choose to include ID if they wish, but they must teach evolution.) But the controversy isn't over. The state board of education will vote on the standards in the fall. And a June Cleveland Plain Dealer poll found that 59 percent of Ohioans support teaching both intelligent design and evolution. Two thirds believe that the "designer" is God.
What exactly do you mean by that? Intelligent Design simply means that one can determine with a reasonable degree of confidence whether a system was designed.
What exactly do you mean by that? Intelligent Design simply means that one can determine with a reasonable degree of confidence whether a system was designed.
What I mean is, by what method is design detected?
How does this method rule out, say, a snowflake, as a designed object, while retaining those things the Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theorists want to declare "designed"?
What possible observations would prove Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory to be false? (I can offer any number of such observations for evolution.)
What does Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory explain that is not explained by naturalistic science?
To a Creationist, there is not a distinction, both life and the snowflake have the same designer... If you want to point specifically to the snowflakes distinction from ID origin theory, the distinction is that a snowflake, relative to the SIMPLEST life form, is incredibly simple, and easily explained by scientifically proven processes which produce the relativly complex structure (snowflake) from a less complex structure (water vapor) in a process we call crystalization. The Intelligent Design thought is that there are no such processes which are capable of producing the complex organisms we can observe from simple "premordial soup", and therefore that there is prima facia evidence of intelligent influence/design.
The clincher for me a chemist and chemical engineer by schooling was the complexity of chemical systems. Systems such as the blood coagulation cascade are incredibly complex and it seems very implausible that such things could just happen to fall into place.
As a matter of full disclosure, I'm a conservative Christian but have absolutely no religious problems with evolution. If someone comes up with the proof to end all proofs for Darwinian-style evolution tomorrow I won't lose a bit of sleep. I also have plenty of scientific problems with young-earth creationisism and consider the notion only slightly more credible than the Tooth Fairy.
Every Intelligence should have a name....how about Farley?
In which case the concept loses all meaning. Everything is designed.
If you want to point specifically to the snowflakes distinction from ID origin theory, the distinction is that a snowflake, relative to the SIMPLEST life form, is incredibly simple,
Both of them are trivially simple compared to a plasma, or the Mandelbrot set, but nobody would claim that these are designed. Mere complexity can't be the litmus test.
The Intelligent Design thought is that there are no such processes which are capable of producing the complex organisms we can observe from simple "premordial soup", and therefore that there is prima facia evidence of intelligent influence/design.
All that means is that we haven't found such a mechanism. It is evidence only of our ignorance. (While Man's ignorance is not evidence for God, it is commonly Man's primary reason for belief in God, as even the most devout person must admit.)
Every Intelligence should have a name....how about Farley?
I prefer Multivac.
:-)
To a Creationist, there is not a distinction, both life and the snowflake have the same designer...
In that event, design ceases to be a scientific theory, since no possible observation could ever falsify it. Evolution, on the other hand, could be proven false by any number of conceivable observations.
If you want to point specifically to the snowflakes distinction from ID origin theory, the distinction is that a snowflake, relative to the SIMPLEST life form, is incredibly simple, and easily explained by scientifically proven processes which produce the relativly complex structure (snowflake) from a less complex structure (water vapor) in a process we call crystalization. The Intelligent Design thought is that there are no such processes which are capable of producing the complex organisms we can observe from simple "premordial soup", and therefore that there is prima facia evidence of intelligent influence/design.
Having waded through some Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory writings, I've come to the conclusion that the only definition these theorists have for "complexity" is "statistical improbability". I have never seen any other definition proposed.
In order for the Intelligent Design/Intelligent Origin Theory to be a valid scientific theory, it really ought to define its terms. We can start with "design". How do you define "design", so that a Martian, examining some object, can tell whether or not it is, in fact, "designed"?
My apologies to the original poster, but the Creationist is not synonymous with the ID theorist. Snowflakes are complex, but not specified; a product of the physical properties of water under certain conditions. There is no discernable property of matter that leads to "specified complexity" such as Dembski is attempting to isolate.
Mere complexity can't be the litmus test.
It's not. I commend you to Dembski's own work for a fuller explaination.
All that means is that we haven't found such a mechanism. It is evidence only of our ignorance.
And if, in fact, such a mechanism did not exist, and the actual cause were an intelligent agent, what line of scientific inquiry would uncover it as such. Darwinists are content to say "we don't know how, but it couldn't have been ...." That's an ideological qualification by definition: not science. As Dembski himself has pointed out " ,... falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure."
(While Man's ignorance is not evidence for God, it is commonly Man's primary reason for belief in God, as even the most devout person must admit.)I admit no such thing. This is gratuitous assertion. If Darwinists could demonstrate a property of matter that shows a tendency to organization into discrete, opportunistic, self-replicating mechanisms the debate would be over, and "creation" would be relegated to the same realm as astrology. Instead, the critics of Darwinism are treated to reductionist or conjectural attacks that could just as easily be applied to Darwinism itself.
The presupposition that Darwinism can explain everything observed, when it manifestly has not, is perfectly acceptable: provided it does not stifle other avenues of inquiry. But stifle it does. So much so that Niebuhr's observation that "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt" acts as blood in the water to those that are suspicious of Darwinism...both justifiably and unjustifiably.
Then I assure you, you haven't "waded" far enough. Might I recommend Dembski's "Why Natural Selection Can’t Design Anything" for your review. It can be found easily as a .pdf on the web.
I'm rather at a loss about what you've read as the whole of Dembski's work hinges on the understanding of contingent complexity (such as in the geometry of a common rock) and "specified complexity" (as in the complexity of a wristwatch). It seems to me that he prefaces just about everything but his grocery list with a primer on the distinction between the two, and more importantly, the methodology for distinquishing between one and the other.
Forgive me for saying so, but you seem to be continually asking how to tell the difference between design and complexity as a rhetorical device, and not actually entertaining the notion that Dembski could have an answer.
Until Dembski (or anybody else) can come up with an algorithm by which any given example of complexity can be judged "specific" or "nonspecific", the term "specific complexity" is a null concept.
I admit no such thing. This is gratuitous assertion.
It is not gratuitous and you must admit it, because only a minority of the religious people in the world are [insert your religion here]. Assuming, for example, that Christianity is the "correct religion", then most religious people in the world (indeed, in human history) have chosen their God or gods incorrectly because they didn't know any better, and they wanted something to fill their conceptual void. It has nothing to do with Darwinism.
The presupposition that Darwinism can explain everything observed, when it manifestly has not, is perfectly acceptable: provided it does not stifle other avenues of inquiry. But stifle it does.
The same charge can be levelled at the theory of electromagnetism. Not every E&M problem has been solved, of course, but we trust in advance that it will ultimately work where we expect it to apply, so we don't seriously pursue alternatives. The only reason there isn't any public outcry about it is because it doesn't happen to contradict anybody's spiritual dogma. If it did, you'd see exactly the same foodfight that you see over Darwinism.
My problem with evolutionary theory has always been reducible to the difficulty presented in moving from elemental amino acids or rudimentary elements and the energy required to move to higher and more complex organizational processes and organisms. This is not merely adaptations but large-scale complex organisms with extremely higher-order processes and functions. This for me is not explainable in purely evolutionary terms. It is true that the intellectual transition to "intelligent design" is one which requires other than a purely materialistic world-view. One of the premises for ID must be metaphysical. But I say, so what?
It's interesting you used the Mandelbrot set as an analogy. But maybe I misunderstood your point. Even the Mandelbrot set has a "design." and an "organization". The organization is the mathematics which undergirds it. That is, the basis is an algorithm with defined boundaries (certain variables not escaping to infinity). Is not this the point of IDers?
No it doesn't lose all meaning. If physicists were to arrive at a unified field theory would this tend to disprove ID or tend to confirm it? Admittedly, the move to ID is premised on some non-materialist premises. But evolutionary theory itself is based on materialist assumptions about nature which have been far from borne out by the datum of experience. Maybe the best which can be asserted from the standpoint of reason is that showing intrinsic order and complexity tends to point towards non-materialist explanations regarding origins.
But what isn't undergirded by mathematics?
That is, the basis is an algorithm with defined boundaries (certain variables not escaping to infinity). Is not this the point of IDers?
No, IDers think that some things in the universe are designed and some are not. By "design" they mean conscious, intentional conception and construction by an intelligent entity. I don't think they'd call the Mandelbrot set "designed".
In fact, you're getting pretty close to my Deistic conception of God the Geometer, but such a God could not be said to have designed anything in the universe except in the broadest sense, as opposed to the narrow ID/creationist notion of specific, intentional construction.
That's the fundamental assertion of ID. Personally, I don't see the slightest basis for it.
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